The Healthy Breakfast Myth

Hey friends! I feel like I’ve slacked a bit on posting recently, but my every day life is going back to normal soon so I’m excited to get some more content your way! If you have any ideas of what you want to see/hear about leave me a comment.

I was making my usual scrambled eggs the other morning and noticed an interesting fact on the lid of my egg carton:

If you’re not familiar with the real food/paleo nutrition movement, this probably doesn’t surprise you. You may even be thinking “Of course eggs aren’t a healthy breakfast choice, they raise your cholesterol and cause heart disease!” Well, I’m here to tell you that not only are eggs healthy, but the whole idea of dietary cholesterol affecting your risk of heart disease is a giant myth.

Let’s start at the beginning with Mr. Kellogg himself. John Harvey Kellogg started serving cornflakes and other breakfast cereals he had created to patients at the Battle Creek Sanitarium (A Seventh-Day Adventist facility where he was the superintendent) because he believed that consuming meat caused unnatural sexual desires. The Sanitarium became a popular retreat for wealthy and famous people to go for health and wellness, and Kellogg decided to sell the cereal with his brother, W.K. Kellogg. So, breakfast cereals (and arguably, vegetarianism in general) were born out of one man’s desire to rid Americans of their impure, meat-induced, thoughts.

Between major cereal companies like Kellogg advertising their “healthy” cereals, and Time Magazine demonizing fat and cholesterol in 1984, traditional breakfast foods like whole eggs and bacon became taboo. We believed mainstream media when they told us that the foods humans have been eating for centuries were now responsible for the rise in heart disease. These days, we’re a little more weary of flashy headlines, but in the 80’s news outlets were considered a reliable source of information. In 2014, Time Magazine admitted that they were wrong and that saturated fat is not actually making us fat and clogging our arteries, but the damage has already been done. We spent 30 years taking fat out of our foods and eating egg white omelettes, and it’s hard to change those habits.

The truth is that a majority of the cholesterol in our bodies is created in our liver, not found on our breakfast plate. It’s also worth noting that the fat soluble vitamins in an egg yolk are way more beneficial than avoiding the small amount of cholesterol that’s in the yolks. Entities like the FDA and USDA are bound by government nutrition recommendations, and government policy doesn’t exactly change overnight, so why would we be relying on the government for nutrition information that may or may not be accurate? I encourage you to take a step back and do some of your own research before blindly following any nutritional advice, including my own.

One of my favorite books about nutrition is called Eat The Yolks by Liz Wolfe, NTP. She does a great job of breaking down the truth behind common nutrition beliefs and why should be eating real foods. If you haven’t read it yet, you should. Especially if you have more questions about fat, cholesterol, or why we should be throwing out our breakfast cereal and cooking up some eggs! 🙂